Turkish Team Develops Microsoft-Based Rescue UAV

By James T. McKenna | February 28, 2008

Emergency Medical Service, Fire, Police, Search and Rescue

Two Turkish engineers have built a prototype of an unmanned helicopter for use in surveying and mapping disaster sites, Microsoft claims. The engineers, Oquz Bayrakdar and Omer Celik, developed RoboTurk, last year with support from the municipal government of Istanbul and Microsoft Robotics Group, a provider of commercial software for autonomous applications. It is designed to use Microsoft’s Virtual Earth mapping tools to capture and stream video to a command post on the ground. The designers and Microsoft plan to make the UAV available commercially.